No more proof needed than this that McMillan is bordering on Anal Retentive insanity:

Re: No more proof needed than this that McMillan is bordering on Anal Retentive insan

After a month of reading all of the criticisms by the Red Auerbachs here, I decided to focus on offensive sets last night, and mgb's end zone tickets afforded an excellent angle to do this. I was amazed at how many different entry patterns the Blazers ran, and there were even a few times where Nate ran pick and rolls with Rudy as the point and Cunningham setting the screen. The Blazers pushed pace at every opportunity, and while it didn't lead to a ton of fastbreak points, it did lead to some nice secondary fastbreak offense that led to wide open shots because the Pacers were out of position.

The "PER" debate probably deserves its own thread, but typically, when one opinion is based on discrediting a "stat", and the other opinion is based on that "stat", then it's obvious to me who has the opinion that is more based in the available information. Not that either is incorrect, but bashing people for holding the opinion based on the "stat" seems a bit out there.

 

Re: No more proof needed than this that McMillan is bordering on Anal Retentive insan

Agreed. Thank goodness that's not what I've done.

We are not talking about his rookie season.

HTH

This "statistical measurement" isn't even totally accepted by it's inventor. If he doesn't have total faith in it, I can't for the life of me understand why any of you do.

And for the 47th time stat boys... I don't give a flying about sports stat formulas.

 

Re: No more proof needed than this that McMillan is bordering on Anal Retentive insan

Are you serious? Bashing people for using PER?

The only people who get bashed are the ones who DON'T suck from it's teet.

The problem here is the opinion that PER is the atomic bomb of basketball stats. That there's just no way you can have an opinion on a player or a team unless you have john hollingers fantasy formula from the cup of Christ.

 

Re: No more proof needed than this that McMillan is bordering on Anal Retentive insan

The A-bomb of basketball stats is adjusted plus-minus. Duh.

 

Re: No more proof needed than this that McMillan is bordering on Anal Retentive insan

 

Re: No more proof needed than this that McMillan is bordering on Anal Retentive insan

The nice thing about PER is that it allows you to have some comparison between players on different teams and between different years. What APM really helps you do is compare players within the context of their own team. It makes more sense to talk about how player player A is vs. Player B from the same team - for the team's success.

It is a lot harder to use APM to compare players from different teams and different years.

There is no one number that will catch everything that happens in a basketball game - it is simply too complicated a game with too many variables in it - and it is a team game first (even if individual performance in basketball is more important than other team games) - but PER is a pretty good way to get a quick grasp of a player's efficiency and it does a very nice job of measuring it and comparing it between players on different teams and, more important - between years (to keep it in the context of this thread). It is especially relevant when it comes to offensive production.

 

how so? Certainly Roy and LA developed during Nate's tenure here. Batum Bayless and Greg all seem to be on their way as well. Cunningham is getting plenty of run too.

I find the PER issues OddE is siting to be pretty unfounded. Most of the raw and advanced stats reflect the same improvements for the players I sited. Not to waste too much of my morning but here's Oden's rates compared to last year (per minute when appropriate)

Pnts +13%, FG% +4%, FT% +13%, Rbs +10%, Assts +75%, Stls -15%, Blks +79%, Fouls -8%

The advanced stats compiled by various sources reflect these same positive trends regardless of if it's Hollinger's PER or whatever. A brief glance at stats from JB and NB suggest they have shown even more dramatic improvement.

okay off to work

STOMP

 

Re: No more proof needed than this that McMillan is bordering on Anal Retentive insan

The problem with PER is that basketball is not a straight up numbers game.

End of.

There's too many other factors involved.

Bad shots can still go in. Terrible selfish players can have huge PER numbers. THE PHX suns players are going to have better numbers that PDX Blazers.

There's emotion.

There's clutch players.

there's chokers

there's players more valuable because they are leaders.

Unbalanced schedules

Theres more good teams in the west than the east.

Theres more good teams in one Conf than there is in another.

Theres garbage time.

How much garbage time was played compared with the season before.

Was the player rushed into duty he wasn't ready for his rookie season giving him a low PER but now he plays in garbage time or a better situation for THAT particular player so now it's sky rocketed.

Players played out of position because of injury.

Having a better PER does not instantly prove you have improved. There might be 1000 other factors that led to a better PER number.

BASKETBALL

IS

NOT

A

NUMBERS

GAME

It's unlike any of the Big 4 sports that way. (Hockey might be similar)

 

Re: No more proof needed than this that McMillan is bordering on Anal Retentive insan

This is true for just about anything that is not trivial in life, and yet, statistics are there and can give you a pretty good measure of these things. All the things that you mentioned are very nice - and true, but all of them average to a mean you can discuss with a certain degree of confidence and margin of error - the basic math behind these kind of statistical evaluations will tell you that with enough data (that's the sample size we keep on mentioning) - you can get answers that you can be very confident in.

There are tons of factors involved in things that are much more important than basketball - such as reaction to drugs and treatments, for example - and yet, in these things that can be "life and death" issues - statistics are often used to make these decisions about what drugs are safe and what drugs are not.

Statistics is a way to give numerical values to things you can not measure directly, and luckily the calculus behind gives you ways to measure the confidence levels and margins of error about them.

I would argue that Batum's small sample size makes the numbers questionable so far, simply said - the sample size is not large enough to give you the confidence level and small enough margin of error to say without doubt that he made a big improvement over last year (even if the eye and the small sample size say he does) - but I would argue that JB's sample size is big enough to be able to say that the measures of his improvement are more likely than not to be real.

 

Re: No more proof needed than this that McMillan is bordering on Anal Retentive insan

Yes I couldn't agree more. My contention is that you can not just scream out a PER number and expect it to end the conversation, or that human opinion is no match for PER.

Much like any statistical analysis, you can either take it at face value, the ultimate truth, the Alpha and Omega or you can dig into the numbers and find out why they might be skewed one way or another.

Statistics can be just as much opinion as what your or my brain box come up with on our own.

 

Re: No more proof needed than this that McMillan is bordering on Anal Retentive insan

I really don't get all of the hostility towards PER. As a composite statistic that measures a player's (mostly) offensive contributions to a game, it does a pretty decent job of capturing how useful a player is relative to his peers, by normalizing for pace and per minute. It's just a tool in the toolbox for trying to objectively evaluate players.

If this composite statistic was so piss poor then it would so closely correlate with what most people assume to be the best and worst players in the league, and sometimes it can refute 'common knowledge' about a player that isn't based on facts, but merely perception (ie. the aging stars cashing in on past years of glory, or low efficiency chuckers like AI and Monta Ellis who put up fantastic per game numbers, but don't do it in a way that maximizes their team's possessions.)

 

Re: No more proof needed than this that McMillan is bordering on Anal Retentive insan

Nobody said it was piss poor. Not even me. It just is what it is. Another set of numbers that don't win the argument on their own.

It's not the ultimate truth as some would like to think. I've listed some examples why above.

Allen Iverson may be a chucker, but if he's on a bad team, what difference does it make if he's missing the shots or if his terrible teammates are?

Edit: BTW if you couldn't tell AI was a chucker the second he stepped into the NBA I think I understand why you might need PER.

 

Re: No more proof needed than this that McMillan is bordering on Anal Retentive insan

How does one "win" an opinion-based argument?

 

Re: No more proof needed than this that McMillan is bordering on Anal Retentive insan

Camby typically leaves his position to get blocks while Joel and Oden got their blocks by staying at their post, so to speak.

Since this current incarnation of the Blazers isn't very good at defensive rotations, Camby floating around to get blocks opens up the middle quite a bit.

Not really a knock on Camby. The other guys on the team need to have Camby's back when goes for a block by rotating to the middle (if possible).

 

Re: No more proof needed than this that McMillan is bordering on Anal Retentive insan

You yell at the people who bring up significant improvements in stats...duh


way to go OddEnormous...you can yell the loudest...you must be right

 

Re: No more proof needed than this that McMillan is bordering on Anal Retentive insan

EVERY MAJOR STAT IMPROVED WITH EVERY SINGLE PLAYER FROM THE YEAR BEFORE...
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/players/4487/career;_ylt=Aq5mksmekQwVWcSWc4dMRBPkPaB4

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/players/4473

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/players/4243

Notice all FG,FT,and 3pt percentage improved too so its not just a minutes thing


Now can you get it thru your thick skull how PER with a significant increase from the year before is just fine for this argument? You must have been watching the games piss drunk

 

Re: No more proof needed than this that McMillan is bordering on Anal Retentive insan

Considering it's an opinion I'm not sure there's ever a winner.

My point again, was that PER is not the endgame that people say/pretend/think it is.

 

Re: No more proof needed than this that McMillan is bordering on Anal Retentive insan

Nobody I think has ever said that here, at least not on this thread....stop digging your grave and figure out a way to dance around my last post. Are those stats not good enough for you either?

 

Re: No more proof needed than this that McMillan is bordering on Anal Retentive insan

I'm not sure PER was being presented as an endgame, but I'd probably rail against it as well if it flew in the face of my preconceived (and firm) opinions. Hell, I've done the same thing with other stats. I happen to like PER, probably as much as anybody on this board, but I will admit that I may be a bit too rigid in its application at times.